Snapdeal now does instant refunds to lure reluctant ecommerce customers

India’s largest mobile commerce site Snapdeal today announced that it will be introducing a new instant refunds system in its store.

Refunds will be granted using an IMPS (Immediate Payment Systems or interbank Mobile Payments Service) transfer, which is well-known to consumers in India. IMPS is a service granted to banks that are registered with a mobile banking service license. The instant money transfer can be accessed on mobile phones and computers.

While it is necessary to have a bank account in order to use IMPS, Snapdeal has agreed to use the system to refund offline, cash-on-delivery purchases as well. In the rare case that a bank does not support the IMPS system – and most Indian banks do – the refund will switch over to the NEFT mode, a similar but slower method of money transfer. Dilip Asbe, COO of the National Payments Corporation of India, says that over 12 million successful transactions are processed every month through IMPS.

In June, Snapdeal did its first enhancement of its refund system by promising that it would complete return requests within 90 minutes. This came along with a partnership with logistics company GoJavas, of which Snapdeal owns a 20 percent stake. The initiative works across 15 Indian cities.

Bring the offline experience online

Today’s announcement comes weeks after Flipkart made a similar move, promising IMPS refunds within 24 hours of receiving a returned product. Snapdeal wants to make it snappier with a much shorter 90-minute time-frame, possibly with the idea that it’ll attract Indian consumers who are still wary of shopping online.

Both of the country’s ecommerce giants are attempting to win the trust of India’s diverse, untapped customers by mimicking and enhancing offline shopping as closely as possible. A few weeks ago, Snapdeal CEO Anand Chandrasekaran explained that the company planned to follow a “string of pearls” model in order to attract India’s untapped ecommerce users.

“Somebody might latch on to Freecharge, Snapdeal, Shopo, or Exclusively, and that might be their entry-point into digital consumption,” he explained to NDTV. “From our perspective, all of those should be great in and of themselves, and they should work together much better.” This string of pearls, as Chandrasekaran explains, will eventually act as an easy entrance for any modern Indian consumer who’s looking to buy, basically, anything.